Dear Mr. Secretary:
I appreciate very much your sending me a copy of your proposed letter to the Chairman of the Surface Transportation Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Interstate and foreign Commerce.
The recommendations made by the Administration to solve the railroad problem and strengthen the transportation industry are in my judgment sound. The soundness of the proposal for temporary financial assistance depends, of course, upon the increased earnings expected to result from the other proposals. Adoption of the former without the latter would, therefore, be quite undesirable.
All the recommendations should be enacted into law with dispatch. hope that no effort will be spared to achieve this result.
Sincerely,
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Note: Secretary Weeks' letter to Senator Smathers, Chairman of the Surface Transportation Subcommittee, is dated April 22, 1958. It contains the following Administration recommendations:
1. Permit the ICG to authorize curtailment and termination of unprofitable services, especially unprofitable local commuter services that burden commerce.
2. Permit the ICC to regulate competing services by motor carriers that are private only in name.
3. Limit and clarify the exemption from regulation of transportation for agricultural products.
4. Revise rate making policies to permit rate ranges that will foster competition with other forms of transportation.
5. Authorize Federal guarantees of loans for capital development by the railroads.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Letter to the Secretary of Commerce Concerning the Railroad Problem. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/234707